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Oh, Leah, I ‘d resign tomorrow
if I could steel myself and endure
mom’s patronizing, smug I-told-you-so,
but no, I’ll continue to slog my way
through this damned Despond of Despair,
continue to suffer our insufferable DA.
No, I’m good at least for one more year,
my own self-imposed sentence, you might say.
It’s almost always drugs. Smack, crack
meth, Ecstasy. With the resources
we waste prosecuting weed, we could feed
so many food insecure kids! We need
to get them out of those trailers
into pre-K if this unrelenting
cycle of poverty is ever to cease!
We’re talking Dorothea Lange like squalor here.
Let me tell you about these two clients of mine,
Jimmy Joshua Jeffcoat and Henry David Dobson,
as different as night and day, but in
a similar plight. Unable to make their bail,
they share the same cell. Jeffcoat’s a creep,
with pitted methadonic rotting teeth.
Dobson, on the other hand, reads Oscar Wilde
and flashes a crooked grin of orthodontic white.
Jeffcoat’s doomed to serve at least seven,
if not more, but Dobson wants, as he says,
“a jury of my peers to decide.” Who knows?
He’s kind of charismatic. DOB 4/1/75.
He sports a full head of slicked back hair.
A ruddy face, creased, furrowed, but kind.
I’d say he’s suffered way too much sun,
and a few too many dark nights to boot.
He calls me “Miss” in a formal sort of way,
and he’s practically tattooless, the only one
his dead son’s name, in between his fingers,
upside down from our perspective.
Yes, I guess he could be gay, though I hadn’t
thought of that. But, yes, you’re right, the tat
is indeed a man’s name, and yes, Wilde, could be,
but if I had to bet, I’d bet he’s straight.
When this gig’s over, I’ll bugaloo back
to Boca, having done my time.
Might go grad school, SCAD, get an MFA
in photography. I’ve learned being a lawyer
is not for me. Should have listened to my
heart instead of my mom. Oh, sure, she’s proud
of what she’s made of me, my Ivy League degree,
her youngest brand name of a daughter.